Unworthy
by secretfanficlover
Summary: Pansy decides to dig up her ancestors grave, leading to her going to the land of the dead to apologize and make things right.


**This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and ** **Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.**

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Word Count: 2362

Title: Unworthy

Note: AU. Pansy's family was buried in Mexico. She finds an inconsistency in the family records and decided to dig up a grave.

Warnings: Death, Religious stereotypes, tomb destruction.

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Golden Snitch

[Name] Crissie

[School] Uagadou

[House] Ogyinae

Ollivanders: 10–11 inch: Write about a Slytherin character.

Care of Magical Creatures: Hippogriff - write about pride

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Hogwarts

Assignment 4: Muggle Art: Task #6: day of the dead - a Mexican holiday with a vibrant artistic tradition - Write an Afterlife!AU

Yearly:

Prompt 984 [Title] Unworthy

Word 33 [Word] Crimson

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Pansy Parkinson was a Pureblood, and she was very proud of that fact, thank you very much. She believed her line superior and that it made them like royalty. She never would have expected that there was a skeleton hiding in the Parkinson line, a half-breed, an animal. She was searching the archives of her family heritage for a school assignment when she came across it.

His name was Harold Jenkins, he was her great great grandfather on her mother's side. She decided to find out what happened to him, against her better judgement. She was enthralled by the ancestry. The whole Parkinson line neatly scribbled into parchment.

Only, Harold Jenkins wasn't a Pureblood. He was a vampire. Her parents had both died in the battle, and she wasn't sure they would tell her the truth, the only thing she could do was find the grave. It was her job to find out about the blimp on their perfect record. She was unfamiliar with the name, and her first search yielded no results. All it showed was that something was being covered up, and that's what led her to the graveyard at night.

She dug up the grave of her ancestor, searching for a clue as to why there was nothing other than a name when she looked up his name, the page from the history book was ripped right out. What were they hiding?

"I knew I shouldn't have gotten out of bed today," she muttered softly as she dug into the soil. She was happy that no Muggles were buried here, it was the Mexican Day of the Dead festival, and that would have attracted way too much attention. Her skin was crimson from perspiration, the digging causing strain on the witch.

It happened suddenly, she found the silver cross through the heart of the corpse, and then when trying to retreat, she fell…

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Pansy woke up to find a black cat sitting patently in the cemetery, as if he was watching her. She wondered if perhaps he was an animagus, but it appeared to be just an animal. It seemed to want to lead her somewhere. She got out of the grave, and saw her body still lying in the hole.

Suddenly, she saw a bunch of ghosts, they were all around her. She screamed, and almost fainted, but she wasn't sure what was happening. She tried to talk to them, but they were all in a hurry. She looked down at her hands, and saw right through them. The black cat lead her to the entrance of the cemetery.

There stood Severus Snape, her Head of house that died during the war.

"Professor Snape?" Pansy cried indignantly.

"Yes, Parkinson, I have been given instructions to come find you, you desecrated a tomb of your own ancestors on the Day of the Dead, what makes you worthy of taking from the dead on a day we are celebrated?" Snape said in a serious voice.

She felt her face go even paler at the rebuke. "My family is covering a blood scandal," she said, somehow feeling like she would need his help to get back to the land of the living. Well, once she solved the mystery she set out to solve.

"Parkinson, I don't think any family is Pureblood anymore," Snape said with a raised eyebrow.

"That can't be!" she snapped, forgetting herself. "We are _better_ than the riff raff," she continued.

"Parkinson," he said in a low voice. "I suggest you consider who you are talking to." Her mouth shut promptly as she realised her professor himself wasn't a Pureblood.

"Professor, I mean," she stuttered.

"Kissing ass doesn't become you, Parkinson," he said nastily. "Come on then, we need to go."

_'Death doesn't become you,'_ she thought but kept that to herself.

"Uhm, where do we need to go?" she asked, suddenly scared. What if she couldn't get back to her body?

"You'll see," he said with a devilish smirk. "Come on, you and the cat." Pansy looked at the cat, wondering what he had to do with anything but followed quietly.

They got to an archway with a blistering purple light that made Pansy shield her eyes as they entered. She saw the black cat magically transform into a Phoenix. "He is your spirit guide," Snape said seriously as it was clear that she looked confused.

"Ah, Bellatrix," Snape said when he saw the woman. Pansy went still again, not wanting to attract attention from this woman, arguably worse than Voldemort himself, in her opinion.

"Are you texting demons?" He asked her curiously, seeing her fascination with what seemed to be a tablet of some kind with letters and numbers on it. Bellatrix cackled at the question, laughing loudly as she saw his expression.

"Why so serious, Severus?" she said, then noticed Pansy making herself as small as possible behind him.

"Fresh meat," she said, grinning as she saw Pansy.

"Not quite, Bellatrix, this one is still alive," he said. She cocked her head, clearly curious.

"Sure looks dead," she added, but walked off anyway.

Snape continued to lead Pansy and now Phoenix (not black cat) to who-knows-where.

When they reached a room that seemed to look like a filing office, Snape showed his badge to someone at the door, and the three odd companions entered the building. It was large and stark white. There was a desk counter at the far back, with rows and rows of chairs. Yet, there was nobody in sight.

"Well done, Severus," Pansy heard the voice of none other than Albus Dumbledore himself.

"Professor Dumbledore?" Pansy asked, forgetting everything in the sight of all the legends that gave their lives during the battle at Hogwarts.

It made her consider things in a whole another light, did everyone end up here?

"Yes, child, I am so disappointed in you, I know you are a Slytherin but I believed you were above digging up a grave," Dumbledore said, looking at her over his half-moon glasses.

"Is that it? It's not all that uncommon," Pansy muttered.

"Yes, but that doesn't make it right, and that's why once a year everyone that does it during this festival gets punished," Dumbledore said.

"Okay, so what's the punishment?" Pansy asked, she wasn't taking any of this very seriously. It had to be a dream, after all.

"We're setting things to right," Dumbledore said. "First, you need to apologize to your great grandfather, and then you need to go on an errand for me," Dumbledore said seriously.

"Oh wow. I've wasted my life," she chirped. "I need to apologize to a creature that tainted my family line?" she asked. Dumbledore's face was turning more and more stern.

So she went out in search of her vampire relative, following the Phoenix. Dumbledore had insisted that her spirit guide would be able to show her to Harold. It was easy to find him, the hard part was apologizing, since she didn't believe she was at fault. It was clear it was him- a pale, old man with skin weathered from the sun.

"Sir, are you Harold Jenkins?" Pansy asked, something inside her felt like she knew him, which she knew was impossible, but thus far nothing that had happened to her had seemed possible. "I am looking for a Mr Jenkins," she added when he looked at her but didn't reply.

"What's so important about me?" he asked Pansy when she approached him.

"You're my great grandfather," Pansy said, feeling the words as she said them. This was no hoax, her grandfather was a vampire, which meant that she was part creature as well.

Harold laughed, and then looked at her. "Pansy? What happened to you?" he asked, suddenly concerned. "You shouldn't be here yet," he continued. "Not that I'm not happy to see family, of course, but you are still so young…"

"I need to apologize to you, grandfather, I had delusions of grandeur, and I dug up your grave to find out why you weren't mentioned in our history books." Pansy replied. She watched his face fall in disappointment as he realised her intentions had been other than pure.

"I loved her, you know, being a vampire doesn't mean I cannot feel love," he said, his voice sad and resigned.

"I see that now," she admitted honestly, she had never felt so ashamed of herself, and she had done some pretty despicable things in her life. "Please forgive me, grandfather," she added. Without waiting for a reply, she walked over and embraced him, and she felt his fragile hands hug her back. She knew she had gotten his forgiveness; she just needed to make sure it was earned. She left him with her heart conflicted, she had to get back, time was of the essence. One day she would really be dead, and then she could finally have a relationship with her family, the one she had always dreamed of having. There would be no lies and deceit, only love.

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"What's next, professor?" Pansy asked when she returned, she was feeling good after talking to her great grandfather, and didn't think the second part of her punishment could be all that bad.

"Here," Dumbledore said vaguely, handing her a kaleidoscope. "You will need this."

Pansy took the item from Dumbledore, waiting for an explanation. "You catch the pearl and ride the dragon's wings," Dumbledore recited poetically.

"What does that mean?" she asked, she was tired and wanted to go home, not listen to riddles.

"Well, that you need to find out for yourself, and until you do, you are stuck here with me," Dumbledore said, his eyes glinting behind his half-moon spectacles.

"Goodness," Pansy said with a sigh, plopping herself down on the ground of the wide empty building, twirling the kaleidoscope around in her hands. She held it up to her face, noticing something different about it. It showed the circling colours, but it saw through walls as well, and far in the distance on top of a mountain, it showed her a pearl. Could this be the pearl Dumbledore wanted? Was it as easy as that?

She got up suddenly, leaving the room without a word, her spirit guide flying along behind her. As soon as she got outside, she realised it wasn't as easy as she thought it would be. There was no visible way of getting onto the mountain where the pearl was hidden in one of the top peaks in the rock face. She sighed out loud; she sure didn't plan on spending eternity stuck in this place, at least, not yet.

Then an idea occurred to her, and she turned to her spirit guide that was flying around merrily. "You can fly," she spoke to him. He turned his head to look at her as if giving an answering response. "Well, you can fly up there and get the item for me," she said. The Phoenix shook his head, indicating that he wouldn't be able to get the pearl back on his own.

"Can you transform?" she tried again, she was desperate for anything that could help her get back home. The animal nodded his head, giving her a cheerful squawk as if she figured out something important. "That is it then, isn't it?" she said, mostly to herself, since he was unable to respond to her verbally. She needed to think carefully, and then the riddle popped into her head- a dragon! She needed something strong enough to carry her up to the top peak of the mountain, and fire would help to get the pearl loose from the rocks.

"Please transform into a dragon," she asked her spirit guide. He transformed in a flash of gold light, and in front of her stood a Hungarian Horntail. She mounted onto his back, and then noticed that all the lights prevented her from seeing the mountain, she took out her kaleidoscope again, holding it to her one eye so she could tell her spirit guide which way to go.

When they reached the top of the mountain the wind was rushing through Pansy's hair, and she could feel that this was definitely not a dream; the thought was both thrilling and terrifying. She guided the Horntail up to the peak where the pearl was hidden. He blew a fireball at the rock, shattering it just enough for Pansy to grab the pearl. She let out a victory cry, doing a twirl with the dragon before heading back down to where Dumbledore's office was.

"Well done, Miss Parkinson," Dumbledore said as she entered the room, holding the prize in her hands. The kaleidoscope was in her other hand, and she was holding it loosely in her hand.

"So, what is this?" she asked, looking at the pearl with curiosity. Dumbledore gave her a grin before replying.

"It's your way back home," he replied. "You put the pearl onto the floor, and when you step on it, you and your spirit guide will be transported back to your body, and then all that remains is for you to lay down inside your body, and it will tie your soul back to it," he explained.

"Are you sure this will work?" she asked, she didn't want to be transported back and be stuck in the ghost realm anyway.

"Of course child, it is the only way, that's why you needed to get to it," he responded.

So Pansy did as she was told, she placed the pearl on the ground and with a sharp intake of breath she said: "Here goes nothing," and stepped onto the pearl, instantly breaking it. It surrounded her with smoke and she felt like something most have gone wrong, but no. She was back in the cemetery. She lay down into her body, and felt an overwhelming power as her soul tied itself back to her body. She was back! She was making changes in her life, for the better. As she stepped out of the grave she felt something— the kaleidoscope, it was still with her. It served as a reminder not to take her second chance for granted.


End file.
